Night of the Cobra Woman (1972)

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The first must-see film of the year.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

This is nothing special. The premise is fun enough for a cult flick, and the story is worked out neat enough, but it's mostly amateur stuff. Marlene Clark as the Cobra Woman is a pretty spectacular dame, though, and she shows a fair amount of nudity as well. Joy Bang is also a sight for sore eyes, and yes, she bares some as well.The story is a bit like "when Nosferatu came to the Philippines in the form of a snake", and it's entertaining enough. The horror of it all (aka the gore and stuff) is essentially pretty cool, but none too overwhelming either. Someone elsewhere on the net mentioned the hunchback as a very welcome addition to the film, but I only agree partially there. The nice backdrop of the Philippino nature, the village and the city streets is something that I'm more into, and there's plenty of that.A very small 6 out of 10.

Joy Bang plays a brilliant scientist (hold on a second--I have to stop laughing hysterically) who is in the Philipines doing research on snakes. Her dorky boyfriend comes to visit, for some reason bringing his pet falcon with him. He goes exploring in the jungle and his falcon ends up killing a snake--bad news since this was the sacred snake of a Filipino snake cult led by an African-American woman (Marlene Clark) who has been using snake venom to keep herself young ever since she was accidentally bitten by a snake while serving as a nurse during World War III. Problem is all this snake venom apparently causes her to turn into a snake (at least, I think--they kept this particular transformation offscreen, possibly as a homage to the original "Cat People", but more likely because this is a cheap-ass Filipino production). But speaking of asses, it is left up to the owner one of the nicest ones of the early 70's (Bang) to save the day after her boyfriend is seduced into some interracial ((and perhaps inter-special) lovin' by the evil cobra women.Actually as Filipino productions go this isn't that bad. It has the same scruffy charm as the John Ashley/Eddie Romero "Blood Island" series and between Clark and Bang it almost approaches the T and A level of the Roger Corman/Jack Hill WIP films. It also seems to directed with a considerable amount of intelligence by someone who was clearly in on the joke (although being in on the joke is vastly overrated in my opinion). The acting is a little weak. Bang is a little miscast and not nearly as good as leading lady as she is as a character actor, and Marlene Clark is no Pam Grier (who really should have played this role). The interest of either of these women in the dipstick leading man is REALLY beyond me though.Not great, but Filipino horror/exploitation fans at least will certainly want to check it out.

Filipino fright flicks don't get much stranger than this singularly messed-up no-budget curio which treats its hilariously absurd story with an endearingly misguided conviction that proves to be as utterly engaging as it is weirdly engrossing. Granted, we're not talking unsung overlooked classic here, but this honey's peculiar enough to warrant a viewing.The ever-adorable blonde sprite Joy Bang (who had sizable co-starring roles in the lowdown funky early 70's drug deal items "Cisco Pike" and "Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues") is a perky, kooky, constant delight as Joanna, an eager beaver college biology student who treks off into the Filipino jungle to research rare breeds of snakes. Joanna brings her scrawny, charmless drip boyfriend Stan Duff (woodenly played by insipid string-bean Roger Garrett) along to keep her company. Unfortunately, Stan falls under the lethal and alluring spell of Lena (the busty, beautiful, frequently nude Marlene Clark of "Slaughter" and "Switchblade Sisters"), a sexy, slinky, slithery black snake goddess who has to regularly make love to a huge volume of dudes in order to retain eternal youth! Naturally, said guys wind up prematurely aging after they've enjoyed a night of carnal bliss with Lena. It's up to Joanna to find an effective anecdote to Lena's deadly venom before Stan meets a most horrid fate.If one can get past the admittedly asinine story, Nonong Rasca's crude cinematography, the jarringly choppy and abrupt editing, Restie Ulami's sleep-inducing score, the mostly flat acting, a deadeningly slow pace and lots of banal dialogue ("Doctor, I've really hit the jackpot with this venom"), "Night of the Cobra Woman" makes for an enjoyably quirky piece of high camp horror dreck. Chief among its strongest assets are the commendably straight-faced mood that treats the whole ridiculous story with utmost seriousness, plenty of choice nutty moments (after having sex with a guy a freshly rejuvenated Lena peels off her old skin and stuffs it in her purse!), Marlene Clark's sexy, often undraped, roll-your-tongue-up-from-off-the-floor smoking hot beauty, and, best of all, an oddly moving performance by invaluable trash movie treasure Vic Diaz as a pathetic, deformed, imbecilic mute retard victim of the irresistibly vampy villainess Luna (Vic also briefly appears as a Japanese soldier at the start of the film). It's a genuine pity that director and co-screenwriter Andrew Meyer, an eccentric talent who started out doing experimental underground features for Andy Warhol and died in 1987, next wound up directing the cheesy Lorne Greene insert sequences for "Tidal Wave," which was Roger Corman's terrible, truncated travesty of the epic Japanese disaster stunner "The Submersion of Japan."

During World-War II, a nurse is bitten by a cobra in a cave. She survives, and is blessed with eternal life, beauty, and a highly lethal sexual prowess. She cohabitates in the cave with the cobra(which she has named "Movini"), and utilizes its powerful venom for all sorts of surprising practicalities...as a healing agent, fertilizer, nail polish remover, etc.Flash to modern times(1972)...pretty, young Joy Bang(fetching ingénue of many films of this type during the 70s)is a UNICEF researcher working to develop antivenoms. She hears about the reclusive snake-lady, and naturally goes snooping around her cave. Things heat up when Ms. Bang's pet eagle(!) kills Movini, and her boyfriend becomes the serpentine seductress's new "boy toy"...all hell proceeds to break loose in a rather insouciant and formulaic fashion. The theatrical poster's image and tagline deceitfully suggested this film to be about a woman in lustful, taboo concupiscence with a large snake. It's not. What it *is*, however, is a sufficiently entertaining low-budgeter which might register as slightly above average due to able performances and higher-than-usual production values for a quickie flick of its particular feather. Despite these minuscule endowments, however, NIGHT OF THE COBRA WOMAN remains a very modest production and a far-from-crucial viewing experience.5/10